FOREWORD<br > Perhaps I shouldn t reveal it (especially in this era when the<br > word "politics" has such a bad connotation}， but I believe that<br > the practices invited by this challenging book go beyond being<br > transformative at the level of the individual {familial) patient:<br > They constitute a strong， progressive， political activity. At a<br > certain level， therapy is always political. This is radical politics<br > at its best.<br > Family therapy， and， broadly speaking， systemic brief thera-<br > pies， had， as it is well-known， a multitudinous and rather fa-<br > moas ancestry: cybernetics， general systems theory， field theo-<br >ry， game theory， psychoanalytic object relations theory， and<br > communication theory， to name but the most frequently recog-<br >nized contributers to the genome of the discipline. But from<br >this list is missing another parent， who has been less sung or<br >who， perhaps， in this Reagan (and post-Reagan!) era of self-<br >started individualism， has cautiously shied away from the lime-<br >light: I am referring to the progressive political movement of<br >the fifties and sixties. In the field of mental health， this move-<br >mhTt triggered， as a spinoff of community-sensitive activism，<br > revision of many practices and above all the deinstitution.<br >allzation reform (or was it revolution?)， carrying as a banner the<br >romantic passion of anti-psychiatry and the rhetoric and prac-<br >tice of social empowerment and social justice.<br > This root， forgotten as it may be， permeated the early years<br >of the field. From its beginning， in fact， family therapy was<br >heralded as a radical alternative to the established traditions of<br >